ON SATURDAY 31 AUGUST anti-globalisation activists were joined by thousands of workers, the unemployed and landless, who marched from the poor township of Alexandra outside Johannesburg to the Earth Summit being held in the exclusive, rich suburb of Sandton

A THOUSAND people polled by The History Channel named the attack on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon a year ago on 11 September as "the most memorable event in world history", writes Peter Taaffe, General Secretary, Socialist Party.

THE TUC is meeting at a time when opposition to war against Iraq is growing. A Daily Mirror poll this week showed 71% of the population opposed to joining a war without United Nations approval. A survey

IS IT possible to survive on the minimum wage? This is the question that journalists Fran Abrams and Barbara Ehrenreich ask in their books Below the Breadline and Nickel and Dimed. Abrams spent three months

THE FIRE Brigades Union recall conference meets on 12 September as we go to press. They will be voting on whether to call a strike ballot over pay. MARTIN REYNOLDS spoke to an east London firefighter about

"BLAIR SAYS that we have to pay the 'blood price' for our 'special relationship' with the US. But it won't be him that pays this price. It will be the thousands of Iraqi people who are killed by bombing and the soldiers that go over there to fight".

LAST FEBRUARY, 70,000 people went to the World Social Forum (WSF) in Porto Alegre, Brazil. It was set up in opposition to the World Economic Forum of government ministers that took place at the same time

MEMBERS OF the Swedish section of the Committee for a Workers' International, Rattvisepartiet Socialisterna (RS), are celebrating spectacular gains in the general election held on 15 September, writes Laurence Coates.

Stoke Socialist Party's campaign: STOKE-ON-Trent Socialist Party are campaigning against low pay and casualisation, Stoke-on-Trent having a very high number of recruitment agencies, writes Sharon Evans.

THE WARMONGERING of George Bush and Tony Blair over Iraq, the recent failure of the Earth Summit to stop environmental destruction, huge corporate scandals and the mass anti-globalisation protests around the world, have all generated discussion on the pernicious role of global capitalism or what Mar, writes This socialist classic is reviewed by Jane James.

Tube workers, London council workers...: LONDON UNDERGROUND workers, firefighters, teachers, lecturers and council staff are some of the many thousands of workers either involved in strike action over pay or balloting to strike, writes Mike Suter, UNISON Education and Culture convenor, Lewisham, personal capacity.

A SIX-WEEK lull in the Israeli/Palestine conflict came to an end with further Palestinian suicide bombings and the Israeli Defence Force using brutal force in Ramallah - a renewed attempt by Ariel Sharon to humiliate Yasser Arafat